Artificial fishing lures such as swim baits attempt to simulate baitfish and to stimulate a strike response from gamefish. The swim bait has become extremely popular with game fisherman. These devices attempt to emulate the look and motion of smaller swimming fish and other creatures, attracting larger game fish to the hook and capture. Swim baits often closely resemble a shad, minnow, bluegill or any fish in size, shape, and color. The body is segmented in sections to allow it to move back and forth through the water.
Conventional sectioned, straight tailed and soft plastic swim baits do not perform natural swimming motions on their own when compared to the live bait fish the lures are simulating. The problems with conventional swim baits are: 1) an unnatural lateral, side to side head wobble producing a wide lateral arc in the front of the lure, this motion is more of a snake like action than of a natural baitfish; 2) an exaggerated head wobble produces the same snakelike, exaggerated, lateral, side to side, wide lateral arc in the tail, similar to what is seen in the head; 3) the swim bait rolls with a longer/wider unnatural rocking about the longitudinal axis, a natural baitfish swims with a slight body roll; 4) the swim bait is unstable during faster retrieves or trolls spinning and rotating about both longitudinal and vertical axis' due to the exaggerated head arc, tail arc and body roll; 5) the swim bait does not swim down or dive downward naturally or glide with an upright orientation. In most cases, when the retrieve or troll is stopped, a conventional swim bait's tail does not beat or move as the bait sinks down toward the bottom, instead, the swim bait just tumbles and sinks.
Many conventional swim bait lures modify the natural, organic look of baitfish to provide twist, curl, paddle, or vortex tails and other visible non-lifelike extensions to generate motion in the lure or to simulate organic fish fins. Often the generated motion of these extensions generate erratic and unnatural motions and they do not look real. In addition, there is some variation in the weight and balance of conventional lures leading to inconsistent performance between two swim baits from the same package.
The fins and shape of living fish enable them to move through the water with very little gross motion as is generated when retrieving many conventional lures. In addition, living baitfish are generally stable in the water and maintain an upright orientation when moving slowly through the water which is very different from many conventional lures that lean and bob in unnatural orientations when they are not being actively retrieved or allowed to sink or rest on the bottom.